I just finished Mega Man 9 on my family’s Wii. I’ve been wanting to play it since it came out a while ago, but I haven’t had access to it until now. Let’s talk about it, shall we ?

If you’re a Mega Man fan… it’s excellent. If you’re not, it could go either way.

Just in case you don’t know, Mega Man 9 is a new game in the series that is built to look and feel like an old game in the series (the 1-6 era specifically). It’s released for digital download on all the current generation consoles.

I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to Mega Man’s story, but right at the start they shake things up a bit by making Doctor Light the bad guy and not Doctor Wiley. I won’t give away where they’re going with this plot, but it was amusing enough and it didn’t dominate the gameplay. I found myself caring about it ever so slightly more than most Mega Man stories. There was also a cute reference to the other games in the series at the very end that got a big stupid grin out of me.

Gameplay though, that’s the shit that matters! Well, it’s a new old Mega Man game. For me, that’s excellent. The only real gameplay complaint I’ve heard from people is that it’s too hard. You know me, I’ll chalk this up to games getting too easy these days and so on, but come on, it’s a Mega Man game! If it wasn’t at least somewhat challenging Capcom wouldn’t have done their job.

I played through a good portion of the game trading off with a friend of mine, who wrote this guest post and one half of this guest post. It may just be fond memories or something on his part, but he found Mega Man 9 to be a huge step up in difficulty compared to previous games in the series. I argued that maybe he just thinks that because we both spent our entire childhoods becoming Aces at the earlier Mega Man games and this one is akin to starting all over again and needing to learn new things.

As it went on though, I think he might have a bit of a point (for once). All the previous Mega Man games had a few really tough parts, whereas Mega Man 9 seems to be set up to be tough throughout. Do I mind this though? Hell no! The game rules.

There is quite a lot of interesting little gameplay ideas in this game, such as section where Mega Man is floating in low gravity and he needs to fire his mega buster to propel himself in the opposite direction. Of course, this is done around instadeath spikes and flying enemies, just for fair measure.

In a bid to keep up with achievement mongers Capcom also threw in a whole bunch of absolutely ridiculous “challenges” that gamers can do to artificially lengthen their replay value. I got a bunch while playing through the first time, not knowing any of the conditions for them. I looked at them afterwards and saw some truly tough ones, such as completing the whole game without taking a hit, or playing through the game once a day for three days like it’s a damn exercise regiment.

My only complaint would be that they took out Mega Man’s slide (which has been a staple since Mega Man 3). I found myself trying to use it constantly and failing because of it. The charging mega buster I can do without, but dude… give us the slide! There was also a complete lack of Protoman in the game and in the story until the very end where he shows up in a cutscene.

Capcom, we love you. Very few other companies would do such a good job with such an endeavor. I notice you almost set the game up for a Mega Man 10 at the end though…

The following post was written by a friend of mine named James, the aforementioned friend who is the only person in the world who follows the Street Fighter story. It is completely unedited, so enjoy. This post will be edited or reposted later just so that it shows up with his name on it. Until then, any feedback can be sent to reddingmineshaft@gmail.com

Ok, so this is more a shout-out to anyone who has tried to follow the Street Fighter franchise based not only on the game, but also the story that holds it together. So I don’t wanna hear any bitchin’ about “who cares” or “what does that have to do with anything?” cause there are some people out there (the very few and proud) who like the characters as personalities and not someone who can “low kick CHAAAAAAIN into the shippu.”

As far as an actual ‘storyline’ for Street Fighter, it isn’t that easy to do. For instance some of the comics by udon and some of the endings of the characters in the separate installations don’t overlap properly or contradict one another. I have my own opinion of how the events in the Street Fighter saga take place, but that is not what I plan to discuss here. Despite there being some inconsistencies, there are some things that are accepted and are undisputable in the Street Fighter Universe. But before I get into that, let’s go over perhaps the biggest problem of all…

Street Fighter IV takes place BEFORE Street Fighter III. Now, not being an expert in roman numerals, I may have this wrong, but I am pretty sure IV is four and III is three. This petty squabble aside… let’s look at the REAL problem with this. But I may as well point this out now, an official story of what is going on in Street Fighter IV has not come out yet (or I haven’t heard of one yet) and so this is all speculation and hearsay (probably should have said that earlier).

Ok, Bison is ALIVE?! What the shit mate? He was killed by Akuma in the second world warrior tournament (That’s right, SFII chums) so he SHOULD be dead. So that’s the first bit of explaining CAPCOM has to do for me. Don’t get me wrong, Bison is a great villain for the series! But he is dead, none of this Shadowloo (-law depending) is still alive bullshit.

Character roster problem #2: Gouken is alive?! I’m sure some people have seen the little anime movies they’ve made for the launch of the game, and put Gouken in at the end of the second movie for no other reason than self-masturbation. And yes, in case you didn’t know Gouken is a playable character. The problem? He is dead. One of the few things we can all agree on in terms of Street Fighter story is that Gouken is dead. The death of Gouken was what spawned Ryu’s journey, it is the reason Street Fighter exists. Throwing Gouken into the mix is for those half-Street Fighter fans; the ones who thought ‘Shen Long’ was Gouken. Again, as my friend made mention, this is just CAPCOM making things more marketable to the group of people who call Dhalsim “that dude with stretchy arms.”

Also in the little anime sort of ‘this is why they are all back’ it is really unimaginative. Essentially what CAPCOM did was remake Street Fighter II in terms of story. Guile still wants to kill Bison cause of Charlie. Chun Li still wants to kill Bison cause he killed her father. And I’m sure Ryu and Ken are in it just to face each other (to be fair that’s why they are always there) and fight Akuma. I’m not sure why E.Honda or Dhalsim are in it, nor Blanka for that matter, but I’m sure it is just a rehashing of the Street Fighter II timeline. Or, as the little anime movie say, because they have the will to keep fighting in them or some shit. That is cool on about a t-shirt or poster level, but it alludes to nothing of the internal struggle Ryu has for becoming the true martial artist (Ok, yeah, cliché sure, but still a hell of a lot better than “Because we can! WOOYEAH ANIME POSE). In that same vein, the ‘four bosses’ are back. Now if you have ANY inclination of the Street Fighter story, they should not be considered the ‘four bosses.’ Sagat is only there to face Ryu again (fuck that’s why we all are there) not so much to further Bison’s plans of world domination (Bison dollars anyone?). Vega is a narcissistic self-promoting pretty boy but does act as Bison’s henchman. The same can be said about Balrog (not so much the pretty part but damn have you SEEN those abs?). The point here is that again, this is how the four characters were treated in Street Fighter II and Street Fighter IV gives them no further development.

As far as the ‘new characters’ are concerned I have no problem with them. They don’t seem too off the wall. For instance C.Viper, although a little to machine like, is an ok addition as a female. Abel is a great addition in terms of style and approach so no complaints there. El Fuerte is great! They added a Mexican! Finally… now all they have to do is add a Canadian. However that fat pudgy bastard they added should go… he is like dan… only stupid and fat. Again, I don’t plan to complain about that here because Necro was just a combo of Blanka and Dhalsim for nostalgic purposes and Twelve was just a little too Alien for me, but I digress…

Don’t get me wrong, I love the Street Fighter series and I have been watching the development of Street Fighter IV since the day I got wind of it (a LONG time ago). I will most likely play it until I love all the characters equally, but as far as the story is concerned CAPCOM has done a hack job just so that they can get a shinier penny out of it. Who is to blame them really? I mean the 2d fighting game niche is kind of small, and of that niche people who actually follow the story even smaller. So in the grand scheme of things it was probably a better idea to do what they did. They may even try to retcon a few things (which will piss me off) but hey, ya gotta do what ya gotta do, right CAPCOM?